Saturday, 15 January 2011

EHO1473, or is it 1469?

One of the disadvantages of having an end-to-end layout is that the rollingstock gets a fair amount of handling in the fiddle yards, so inevitably there is the occasional mishap and something gets damaged. Footboards on passenger cars are particularly vulnerable and this proved to be the case with my EHO as the years of handling (it was completed in October 1990) had resulted in the separation of some of the footboard brackets from the solebar of the carriage. Two of them had, in fact, disappeared. It found its way to 'workshops' (the modelling bench) and was soon back in service after some minor repairs.

This EHO was constructed by using the sides from the urethane kit of a mansard roofed EHO put out by Main West Models in the early 1980s (the kit was reviewed in AMRM Issue 123, December 1983). I'm not terribly good at building kits the way the manufacturers intended ;o) and this one was no exception, as rather than build yet another mansard roofed EHO, I decided to construct it as a low semi-elliptical roofed van, from Contract 5/10 of 13 vehicles, numbered from 1466 to 1478, which were delivered between November 1910 and May 1911. The sides were the only part of the kit I used. I scratchbuilt a new chassis, ends and roof. The chassis and ends were mainly styrene, with timber and brass detailling parts, while the roof was carved from balsa and covered with tissue to represent canvas.

Now to the reason for the title of this piece!

One of the advantages of an end-to-end layout is that only one side of a vehicle is visible when the model is present on the layout. When I started building Lambing Flatback in 1983 I soon worked out that I could have twice the number of passenger vehicles for half the effort by giving them different identities on each side. It also meant that I could not only give them different numbers on each side, but I could also paint them in different colour schemes! Just about all my (appropriate) passenger rolling stock is painted Tuscan and russet on one side and post 1954 Indian red on the other! This EHO is no different, while both sides are painted Tuscan red, 1469 has the top buff line and lining out around the guard's door, (I have since discovered that it probably should be lined out around the luggage doors as well) as was common in the early 1950s. EHO1473, on the other hand, has no lining at all, as became common in the late 1950s.

The '1469' side, Tuscan red with the lining out style used (officially) from 1946.

The '1473' side, with the plain red scheme, with no lining at all, used from the late 1950s.

So, while this dear old relic of a bygone age is not up to the standard of the ILM high semi-elliptical roofed EHO kit (after all, the masters for that one were constructed by the Great Guru of Lindfield, Mike McCormac, by way of practice for his own 'dogbox' range, which, hopefully, will be released before we all die of old age... ;o) it has served Lambing Flat well for over 20 years and will remain a useful member of the fleet for many years to come, even if I do get around to finishing my ILM EHO!

About Me

Lifelong railway enthusiast and modeller. Originated the concept and organised the first decade of the 'Modelling the Railways of NSW' convention. Started building the current version of my HO scale NSWGR steam-era layout 'Lambing Flat' in 1983. Started my 1:24 scale Tasmanian West Coast inspired garden line 'Rurr Valley Railway' in 1999. Have been the Production Manager of the Australian Model Railway Magazine since 2006.